25.2.1948 President Beneš accepted the resignation of the ministers

Some historians still refer to it as a fatal mistake that President Edvard Beneš accepted the resignation of the ministers at the hands of Klement Gottwald. This happened on 25 February 1948. The Communists thus came to power.

Several events preceded the resignation of the ministers. The day before, on 24 February 1948, a general strike had taken place, in which some 2.5 million working people had taken part. It lasted from 12 to 13 hours. Its aim was to enforce social and economic demands, and the Communists used it to exert pressure. Action committees with a pro-Communist orientation were formed in the leadership of the non-communist parties. In the Social Democrats, moreover, there was a rapprochement between supporters of Zdenek Fierlinger (a Communist functionary, inCzechoslovak Prime Minister from 1945 to 1946) and Bohumil Laušman (a Social Democratic politician who was in exile after 1948 before being kidnapped and imprisoned by the Communists).

With these steps, the Right was definitely isolated. "It must be said here that this decision was also made as a result of pressure from the People's Militia, which occupied the party secretariat building and then the People's House. Ministers Majer and Tymes resigned on 25 February. Pressure actions continued, officials of the National Socialist Party were arrested, and the publication of the party newspaper Svobodné slovo was stopped. An action committee was formed in the People's Party, which took control of the daily newspaper Lidové demokracie," historians František Čapka and Jitka Lunerová describe the events of the time.

The Communists threatened a general strike and stepped up pressure on the president by signing a resolution demanding the resignation of ministers. "The powerful popular demonstrations of the last few days have shown that our working people condemn in complete unity and with indignation the policy of the ruling parties and demand the formation of a government composed of honest progressive patriots, devoted to the Republic and its people," said the Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Czechoslovak Republic in a letter addressed to the President of the Republic.

Gottwald's proposal for a government, which he negotiated almost all day, was accepted by President Edvard Beneš at 4.30 pm on Wednesday 25 February 1948. It had twenty-five members, 13 of whom were Communists, three non-party members and the rest representatives of non-communist parties but dependent on the Communists. With this move, the Communists finally came to power and established a totalitarian regime.

Benes, on signing his resignation, told Gottwald that the whole people did not wish the demise of democracy. "But you gentlemen and the party you lead wish me to kill democracy in Czechoslovakia with my signature and to betray not only the...but to the whole nation's most precious oath, which lies in the words of my promise to the President Liberator: We shall remain faithful. If I do so, it is only in order to prevent the fratricidal struggles which you threaten to provoke. I trust that the people of Czechoslovakia will understand my action, and on the earliest opportunity will prove in their majority that they are alien the methods you are using and that you have underestimated the moral maturity, loyalty and democratic sense of our people," Benes said.

But within the next six days, the existing democratic regime in Czechoslovakia was completely dismantled and replaced by a totalitarian communist regime...

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